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Chinese class in the morning. Talked with the professor over break about traveling. She recommended going to tibet, saying that there should be a a fast train to Lhasa that would only be 1-2ish days. That could be cool.

Walked around after class to see if I could find a costume for Halloween. Didn’t, and wasn’t really expecting to. But picked up some lunch and some calligraphy paper while I was out.

Practiced some calligraphy before afternoon classes.

The main core lecture was on BBS and internet usage in modern china. Lots of cool stuff, the guy referred to lessig a few times, which was cool. China’s BBS situation is on a whole different level than any forums in the US; threads will easily get 500,000 responses in a week or so, and can easily get 5 million views.

Next was calligraphy, we looked at running and flying scripts, that is the more cursive styles, but also the styles that are different enough from actual characters that it’s almost impossible to read them. (they’re more like art than writing in that sense).

Grabbed some dinner after classes. Then came back to the dorm.

Read through a couple newspaper articles with my tutor for an hour, Palin is apparently being accused of trying to sabotage mccain by some republicans so that she’ll look better for the 2012 elections.

surfed the web a bit in the evening and relaxed. One more class tomorrow, and then it’s the weekend.

Got up at 7, chinese class.

After class met with Prof. Wang for a checkin on my research. We had a good conversation, and she gave me contact information for a couple people that sound really interesting. One, her sister, who works in the government’s intellectual property bureau and secondly a professor in the media studies area who is familiar with the film industry.

Spent the afternoon studying chinese and doing math. Met with my math tutor for an hour in the evening and went over convergence and separation within metric spaces.

not too much of note, chinese homework is the main killer during the week, it takes me most of a day to get all of the new characters into my head.

Tomorrow I’ll see if I have time to get a costume of some sort.

got up at 7.
Feeling like I’ve got another cold coming on, but I suppose thats to be expected.

spent the morning studying chinese, doing math. Didn’t get quite as much done as I wanted to. Did get my laundry done.

Had class, it was fine.

After class, spent the evening studying tomorrow’s chinese. Got a bit more math done.

Nothing particularly exciting of note today, beyond of course a lot of chinese studying.

after math class tomorrow I’ll hopefully get some time in on my research, and if I’m not missing something I’ll have some time to relax and wander around beijing this weekend.

Got up at 7, packed my bag and left it at the hostile front desk top pick up.

Walked south, out through the south city gate and continued down. Walked to the pagoda that we’d seen signs for yesterday, but it wasn’t open for tourism yet, and the guard told me to come back later, even though the locals were walking in to do their morning exercises.

Continued walking down, saw an art museum, which also opened later so kept walking, 7-9 don’t seem like a particularly active time in the city.

had some breakfast fairly far south, and stopped in a mcdonalds for a cup of coffee before heading back. Stopped in at the museum since it’s hours claimed it would be open, but there was nobody there, so I went back to the pagoda. Walked around there for 45 minutes or so, saw the pagoda and the museum attached to it, which was essentially the same as all the other cultural attractions in the area.

Headed back south to the market I’d been to yesterday, and picked up a cheap small backpack to carry stuff back in. Also got a newspaper, since one of my homework assignments for friday is to explain a news article from a xiAn newspaper.

caught a bus back to the hotel, and still had 20 minutes, so walked north to the Muslim area one last time and got some preserved fruit (honeydew and mango, I believe) and also a really good chicken sandwich.

Came back to the hotel, got on the bus, waited a little bit for those not on time to arrive. And we headed off to the airport.

The plane was delayed a couple hours due to ‘airway congestion’, but didn’t have any problems. The airport had free wifi and power, which was nice.

Got into beijing about 6-ish (spent the plane ride writing my core homework for thursday) and taxi-ed back to the college.

Went out for a quick cafeteria dinner after unpacking, and then came back to spend the evening learning the Chinese characters for tomorrow.

A short week this time, but a lot to pack into it.

Woke up at 6:30. Got dressed, packed, and waited outside the rooms until 7 for our morning gathering. We went north a block into the muslim district again for breakfast, this time I pointed to a paomo place and asked if I could eat there. About half the group ended up eating there. This is one of the famous specialty foods of the city, and I quite enjoyed it. They give you an empty bowl and two fairly hard bread rolls. you tear the rolls up into small pieces (shred them), and give it back to them. They fill it up with broth (with lamb meat and some noodles) and give it back. the broth soaks into the bread, and tastes really good.

Next we got onto the bus, as a new tour guide materialized (so we once again seemed to be creating an entourage with 2 tour guides and a bus driver). We were going first to the terra cotta warriors, but instead detoured to a factory where they make the imitation ones today. Not everyone realized that it was pointless being there, and so it took 30 minutes to get everyone rounded back into the bus, with plenty of dirty looks at the tour guides on my part.

Went to the actual warriors next. It’s been turned entirely into a tourist trap by this point. Not entirely surprising, i suppose, but still a disappointment. They took us first into a cinema, passing an old guy behind a big fan who was apparently the farmer that discovered the ruins. He now charges for signatures. You’re not allowed to take his photo.

The movie was some weird reenactment of soldiers doing things, it didn’t seem related to the ruins at all, so I slipped out the back and decided that I was frustrated enough to go off and see the sights on my own.

I walked through the three pits. there are railings around them, at least on the weekends they are fully crowded by tourists. Quite a spectacle, but so built up as to not be really that exciting. Took some pictures. You need a better zoom lens to really capture individual sculptures though, since you can get close to any of them.

There was a poor quality museum on the premises too, walked through it, and then sat and waited for about 15 minutes while the rest of the group finished their tour.

had dinner at a ‘village restaurant’ which had tourist prices, but decent food. Hi-lights were probably the pomegranate chicken and the tofu dish.

Drove next to a provincial history museum. It was two stories, I got through it in about 50 minutes, and then waited another half hour for others to finish. On the way back to the hotel, the bus passed by the market I’ve been wanting to go to, and the let me and others interested off there.

The market was cool, lots of small stalls, but decent looking / quality clothing. lots of flocks of college students. I got a jacket and a belt for 150 rmb.

Walked back towards campus, though we were still outside of the wall. Found a dumpling place, and had egg/chive, radish/chicken, and pork dumplings which were cheap and good. Took a bus the rest of the way back to the hotel.

Our room wasn’t open, (that is, sergio who had the key to the room with everyone in our group (me, max, joe, steven, jeremy) wasn’t around) so we hung out in joes room until he got back. I took a shower and used the internet at the hostel lounge. Then walked around the Muslim district one last evening. Got some preserved kiwi slices and a pomegranate.

Came back, started watching ‘painted skin’, but decided it wasn’t that interesting, so I came back to the room for bed. got myself in order for tomorrow, and heading to bed soon. I need to finish coming up with a plan, so I don’t waste my free time tomorrow morning.

Got up at 6:30 on the train. We were stopped at a station, it was not the xian station. At about 7:30 we got to xian after a couple more starts and stops.

took taxis from the train station a few blocks to our hostel. Dropped our bags, and went to find some breakfast. We walked a block over and ended up in the islamic shopping area. We stopped in the first restaurant we found, which was a big mistake. Breakfast was the only thing on their menu, which was bowls of porridge, and a small pita filled with hot peppers and hot sauce. Very spicy.

After breakfast we walked back to the hostel, I wanted to grab my camera. After lots of fussing around we got taken to another building behind and shown rooms. They’re really basic, the teachers said they were expecting something nicer.

We grabbed stuff, and headed to the main bell tower. to the north of it was more of the islamic shopping area. we walked through a long winding alley lined on both sides with stalls to get to a mosque at the center of the area. We admired the mosque for the while. It looked very similar to any temple, but had lots of arabic rather than chinese. on the way out we looked around at the shops. Mostly for sale were cheap knock off belts / shoes/ shirts. Several north-face ones although the quality was horrible.

at the end the teachers bought us some snacks from one of the stalls that were quite good.

Next up was lunch. we continued to the east of the east of the bell tower, to a higher class area of town.
we stopped in a large restaurant of some sort and had a very good meal.

after lunch we went south; to the stone forest. This was the first library in some senses, and is a preserved area full of gigantic stone tablets. they were the original writings of Confucius and many other historically significant writings.

there were legitimate rubbings that you could see made and buy, but they were fairly expensive (300 kuai)

Next up was the city wall. we walked up on the wall, rented bikes, and biked all the way around (8 miles)
the bikes didn’t quite have enough shocks to deal with the rough stone path.

Me and max finished at the same time, so we headed back to the room together. I bought a fake rubbing near the wall for 20 kuai, a much better deal, considering it was identical in every way I could tell.

got back around dinner time. A bunch of people were hanging out in the rooms, since they had either not wanted to bike, or hadn’t wandered around afterwards.

I headed out with a group of people (max and jeremy) others less actively. into the islamic area. We bought and shared various types of street food. There were glutinious rice slabs in some syrup, rice cakes with jelly, noodles, pot stickers, two pieces of dough with some meat mixture between them – all fried, and many others. It was a good meal.

after dinner we decided to check out an arcade we had noticed earlier in the area. There was a crowd of teenagers around the dance machine, and they all seemed quite good at it. This was a fancier version than the US that can also detect and require hand motions. We looked around downstairs as well, which turned out to be just a gambling area.

Walked back to the room to collect belongings and regroup. Went over to a cafe for a bit, got icecream and a lovely view of the city.

Max and I decided to take a look at the nightlife. We walked down the street that was claimed to be active, but really didn’t see much that looked exciting. There were several expensive karaoke ‘clubs’ that looked to cost 50 – 500 kuai for a room.

On the walk back we came across something claiming to be a club. We walked in, and really weren’t expecting what we found. It had loud music, a very small area, tons of staff, and was quite expensive. Coming out after ordering one drink we decided that it was likely either a front for prostitution or mob activity.

Came back at 11, headed to bed.

Woke up at 9ish. Reviewed the article that I was talking about, packed, and then went to class.
Class was cool, we talked for the first hour on newspaper articles Me and Sergio had picked out. Mine was on windows black-screen initiative. Microsoft has started a newer enforcement of pirated windows where the bad copies turn the screen black periodically. I learned a good set of words related to software from that. We spent the second hour learning about stuff that would be useful in xian.

After class at noon, I went over to the cafeteria to meet with my research tutor. We had lunch at the cafeteria, and then set out to do some interviewing. We weren’t able to find a dvd vendor quickly, so we decided to spend this session interviewing students. We talked to 5 students, representing probably a fairly elite urban cross section, and got some interesting answers from them.

At 2:45 we finished, and I headed back to the dorm. Got on the bus at 3, and we drove to the train station. Got some fast food, and mochi for the train ride, and got on the train at about 5. Hung out on the train for a little bit, watched survive style 5+ with some people, which is a great, if confusing for the chinese teachers, movie. Then spent the evening chatting with others for a while. People are surprisingly interested and uneducated in terms of physics, and put much more faith and value in religion than I can really fathom.

Went to bed, not much else exciting.

Got up at 7am. Took the midterm. It went fine, I can write well now, although my reading comprehension isn’t as good. A reversal from where I’ve been before, which is cool. It gives me something different to focus on, especially since I feel like I’ve got the memorization thing down pretty well at this point.

After the test I went back to my room and wrote out the calligraphy homework. Did a bit of catch-up on correspondence, and a bit of research into additional things to see this weekend in xiAn. It looks like there won’t be quite enough time to go out to hua shan, since our flight back is at 3 pm, which is mid afternoon. I did find the main shopping streets in the town, as well as the other attractions though from asking the pomona language resident who grew up in the city.

I also stumbled across a couple other interesting looking areas to try and get to after the trip is over.

The core class period was used for a discussion of our rural stay. It wasn’t all that informative, most the same points we had all experienced while we were on the rural stay. The only thing that was interesting was that Prof. Wang talked about her history. She was in the student protests back in the 80s, and then was in england as they finished up. She talked about seeing the student leader who went to cambridge after the protests ended and thinking that he was a politician and a fraud. It was really interesting to hear how she initially was really disillusioned by the chinese government, but then the rallies and seeing the leadership of it safely in england talking about it’s political significance brought her back towards the side of the government.

Next was calligraphy, we looked at the standard style, I still can’t quite get the ‘silkworm head, duck tail’ style of the strokes, but most people can’t, so I don’t feel too bad. I should buy some paper to practice with at some point. The class was reasonably interesting.

After class not a ton was going on. I went out to dinner, got a ‘pizza’, a piece of bread with ham and peppers on it. The chinese style bread too, rather than italian. (that is: really fluffy, and really sweet.) it was interesting to say the least.

In the evening I wanted to go out and do something. I was hoping to get out to one of the night markets, but nobody else was really that excited about the prospect. The second year students have at test tomorrow, so were all studying. I ended up going out with max and rebecca again. The plan was to bike to the subway station and then take it to a nightclub in sanlitun. I was able to cary rebecca on the back of my bike without problem, and I feel a bit more comfortable doing that now. Max’s bike kept loosing it’s chain though. He was borrowing it from alice, and she needs to take it to one of the numerous mechanics and get them to take a couple links of the chain, since it’s way loose. Since it had fallen off a couple times before we got out of the college, we figured we hadn’t really come up with a workable plan.

We ended up going over to wudaoko again. We met, by accident, one of rebeccas friends. A girl who’s chinese name is lanju who also went to saas for highschool and now goes to davidson. She knows jenny and gray, as well as william kostner and kelvin bates. (all of whom I know to some degree from lakeside.)

I left when they started dancing, since I wasn’t quite willing to get to bed that late, and walked back to campus. Collected my bike from where I’d left it earlier in the evening and came back.

Leaving for xian tomorrow afternoon. Before that i’ll meet with my disp advisor and hopefully get some interviews done.

Got up at 7, fairly tired out.

Went to class, did fine on the dictations and homework and such-forth. We went over on time a little bit, so that we’re all squared away before the exam.

Spent the rest of the morning finishing the math and beginning to review everything.

Did math tutoring for a couple hours in the afternoon, met with my language tutor for an hour as well.

Went out to the nearby cafeteria for some dinner.

Not much else today besides studying chinese. Hopefully I’ll be ready for tomorrow.

got up at about 8:30-ish. Did a round of studying through the Chinese. Got through the reading for math, and began working through the problem set.

Went out to the store to get a quick lunch.

Came back, did another round of chinese, wrote out the set for tomorrow, since class wasn’t until the afternoon.

Did work on my disp, got a set of questions written up, and emailed my tutor, we’re going to meet friday afternoon.

Went to class at 2, did grammar for most of class, with some speaking at the end. She told us that the test on thursday would involve us writing out a dialog and memorizing it before hand, so that we could also read it without looking at it.

Came back, studied the new words for tomorrow for a while. Did the homework as well.

Went to dinner with sergio. Got beans with potatoes, rice, and a baozi. We stopped by a milk tea place on the way back to the dorm. Got a kiwi bubble tea.

Did more studying in the evening. Got much of the math homework done, and feel reasonably comfortable with the words for tomorrow. The dialogs these past few days have been annoying, because they have many additional words that we’ve never learned in them.